Old Germans

So I was dispatched for a “Cardiac Emergency.” That seems pretty straight forward, right? But Cardiac Emergencies run the gamut from chest pain, to rapid heart rate, to indigestion, to stabbings, so you never really know what you’re gonna get when you hear that. You just hope that our dispatch center did their job and got you enough background notes from the caller that you can do a little pre-gaming before the call.

I still have to do that; I don’t know if everyone in EMS needs to, or if it’s just me, but before calls I’m going over stuff in my head like, “The pediatric dose of Atropine is 0.02mg/kg” and, “Lung Sounds, Hyper-resonance, needle thoracotomy.” I have all these little tricks I do to keep myself calm and focused when I’m feeling a little antsy. And the main thing I do is go over our protocols in my head. In that fashion, I could do this in my sleep. On autopilot. It’s paint-by-numbers.

We arrive at our location- a high rise 55-Plus community. It’s new, it’s pretty posh. It’s filled with old people.

As an aside, where I work, something like 85% of all of the calls we handle are for the elderly. They’re just old, so they tend to start falling apart. But after handling hundreds, after hundreds, after hundreds of elderly patients, I just want somebody younger. Now, that’s not to say I want younger people hurt; I don’t want people to be hurt at all, but somewhere, sometime, someone young is going to get sick or otherwise hurt, and I might as well be the paramedic that gets to take care of them.

But we arrive on scene. (Is it arrove? Did I just make up a word?) The building’s like 3 stories tall, and has a couple of elevators. Only one of them too small for our litter and all our gear. We picked that one. And as the four of us (Me, partner, Police Officer, Squad Line Officer) are jam-packed in the thing, somebody offers me chocolate cake (I’m kidding).

We get out, and as one big unit we walk to the right apartment, on the third floor as it were.

The cop knocks, a firm sound… and as we hear someone call out, “Come in!” We do.

There’s often that few-second period where you sort of mill about. If you see me rush right to the side of a patient, you can be assured that we’ve got good enough notes to know the call’s not a good one. But I usually have enough time to look around, get a handle on the surroundings, and how the place looks, before I meander my way over to the patient. This time, it was me leading off too:

Me: “So, what’s going on folks?” My hands in front of me, clasped gently together near my waist. (It’s a defensive position I was taught to take. It’s defensive, but not offensive. It looks like you’re just resting your hands)

Their apartment is cluttered, but not ridiculously so. It’s got that look like they’ve just moved in and haven’t yet found a place for everything. They have a giant window which has to be about 6 feet long, solid one piece. Just outside, you can see the full moon at 3 am. It’s actually kind of nice.

Wife: “He’s having chest pain.”

Me: “Oh, really? Well that’s no good, huh?” I walk over to the patient, as the other crew member pulls the wife aside and asks her if she has a list of her husband’s medications. She has a box.

Me, to the patient, who’s lying down on a sofa with a little smile on his face: “So, you’re having chest pain, sir?”

Patient: “Oh, I’m not having chest pain.” He says, sort of half-joking, half-annoyed as he waves his hand dismissively.

Me: “But your wife thinks you are?”

Patient, still smiling: “That bitch is crazy.”

Me, laughing as I speak: “Oh, ok. Are you having any pain at all?”

Patient: “Maybe my chest hurts a little.”

Me: “Where in your chest?”

Patient, pointing to his stomach: “Right here,” right near his belly-button

Me: “Well, are you having chest pain, or stomach pain?” I ask, still smiling, still trying to give off that professional calm-look that also communicates that I care. Do I care?

Patient: “Oh, I don’t know. I feel like I have to poop.”

And just like that, my fucking brain turns off. We get called out for a “Cardiac” and we get a guy with gas pains. I fucking love it. I love how you can get a full-time dispatch center with professional call-takers, and what gets designated cardiac, turns out to be a guy who’s had too much fiber in his diet. Eh, it’s not their fault- they only go on what the callers tell them. And if the callers are idiots?

If there’s any one strength that I have as a paramedic, any God-given gift, it’s that usually within the first 30 seconds of looking/interacting with a patient, I can tell whether or not they’re sick. I can tell, just like that, whether they’ll be ALS (Advanced Life Support- paramedic in the back of the rig) or BLS (Basic, EMT in the back). I’m looking at this guy, and it goes like this: He’s resting comfortably. He’s calm. He’s laughing. He has enough time to be a little cheeky. He’s not pale. He’s not sweaty. He’s not favoring or otherwise protecting any particular part of his body. I just get that Sixth Sense I’ve built over the past ten years. He’s fine.

That’s the only time I can pick up on non-verbal clues though. Otherwise, I’m completely retarded. I’m the kind of guy who walks a date to her door… then she waits… a little nervous looking, leaning in a little closely… and I shake her hand and say, “Ok, goodnight!” instead of planting a kiss on her. I’m the kind of guy who sees his boss walk in at 9 am, when he asks, “What are you doing right now?” and I respond, “Trying to sleep asshole!” when the guy’s actually pissed about something, and not just there to socialize. But on 911 calls, I’m balls-on accurate 90% of the time, within that first 30 second period.

So I turned my brain off. Now granted, I made that conversation a little shorter than it actually was. I asked the guy about his Past Medical History. If he’d ever had chest pain before. If he’s taking any cardiac medications. If he had any episodes of chest pain today, at all. It was all “No”s. So I dropped back and punted to my partner.

Eventually, the guy decided that he wasn’t going to go anywhere with us. I guess they just wanted us to “check him out” (which is another thing that pisses me off, because when we do that, we usually find something wrong, and then they never want to go to the hospital. They get us up at 4 am, are actually sick, and then they refuse care which increases our legal liability exponentially. You want to see a pissed off paramedic? Tell me you just called me out at 4 am for me to “check (you) out.”)

The squad line officer though… he didn’t have much to say on the call, simply because we were following the same rhythm we always do, and after ten years, you tend to know how to do your job in the shortest amount of time, with the least help. But he’s looking around and noticed the paintings and posters the guy’s got on the walls: All WW2 stuff. We’re talking B-29′s, Single Engine Fighters, etc… so he asks:

Line Officer: “Hey (patient’s name) were you in World War Two?”

Patient: “Sure was. Pacific Theater.”

Line Officer: “Oh, did you see combat?”

Patient: “Yep, sure did. Killed me a lot of Japs!”

Line Officer, laughing: “Ok. How long were you over there?”

Patient: “The whole 6 years!”

Line Officer, still laughing: “But World War Two was only four years long.”

Patient: “I stayed extra long. I loved killing me some Japs! I like to run ‘em through with my sword.”

Line Officer: “Your sword?”

Patient: “Yeah, stolen right off a dead Jap I just killed.”

Line Officer: “Wow. So you did see a lot of combat, huh?”

Patient, speaking with evident pride, “You betcha! I liked to run ‘em through. Right through their bellies. Make ‘em wiggle on ‘em!” he says as he makes a thrusting motion with his arm.

Line Officer, looking a little squeamish: “Yikes…” looking around, to the other members of the crew with a squeemish look on his face.

Patient: “Yeah, them Japs… wiggle like anyone else when you stick a sword in their belly!” He laughs.

Line Officer: “Yeah, but that’s not exactly P.C. nowadays… I mean, they’ve been our allies for more than 50 years now.”

Patient: “Allies?” He asks, incredulously, “So what? They still crapped themselves when I stuck ‘em in the belly!”

And that was it. He went on about how much he liked to kill “Japs” and how silly they looked impaled on the Samurai Sword he’d stolen off one of them. It was gross. I’m all for respecting our elders, and being grateful to “The Greatest Generation” but the way that conversation went, I just felt sick. I felt like I needed a bath.

He didn’t end up going with us, but the couple did end up calling us back like 4 times in the next few months, always with the same thing. We get called for “Chest Pains” and he points to his stomach. I make mention of the fact that his wife called us for a “Cardiac Emergency” and he says, “She’s a damn German, you know?”

She’s not German. She’s as American as apple pie. But even if she were, who gives a shit? Didn’t he fight in the Pacific? Aren’t all German women really, really, ridiculously good looking?

And that, my friends, is the point of this story: All German women are good looking. And all Half-Japanese girls should be models.

Fin.